


Claudia and Madeleine Triptych

by bardsley



Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 10:09:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7263709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bardsley/pseuds/bardsley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are three separate stories inspired by the Every Woman 2016 Challenge. Each story is an Alternate Universe – Canon Divergence wherein Claudia and Madeleine did not die. They are otherwise unrelated. </p><p>“The Scent of Her Skin”: Louis finds Claudia in contemporary Japan. </p><p>“Her Story”: A modern-day mortal is given a chance to hear a vampire’s story. This time, the story is Claudia’s. </p><p>“Grow Strong”: Claudia and Madeleine are rescued from the Theatre des Vampires.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Scent of Her Skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sweetcarolanne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetcarolanne/gifts).



> Sweetcarolanne, I hope that you enjoy them. 
> 
> Also, my deepest thanks to DarkAngelAzrael for editing the stories. You are amazing. All remaining mistakes in the stories are mine.

 

Tokyo was an uneasy combination of the very old and unapologetically new. On a high-rise building, a round, bearded, cartoon face of Colonel Sanders smiled out as a devil horned _oni_ on a lord’s castle might have done centuries ago. Louis looked up, bemused by thoughts of how commerce had created new lords and new devils. A soft gasp drew his attention back to the street. It was a sound of surprised delight that was achingly familiar. It took him back centuries ago, to when he walked the midnight streets with Claudia in a far different place. People would stop to marvel at the perfectly painted China doll walking among them. Women often made the same kind of sound as the one he just heard.

 

At first, Louis was certain that his mind was deceiving him when he saw her there. He had seen Claudia and Madeleine burned to dust. He could still feel the ashes of his child blowing against his cold skin. But the phantom woman remained. Woman, not girl. Claudia herself looked just as Louis remembered her, however, he could not look at her and think of a girl. It was something in the way that she carried herself. The certainty in her fine blue eyes when they met his was more than the mere intelligence that had been there before.

 

It was the height of summer and Claudia wore a light cotton _yukata_. The fabric was starkly black with a pattern of white and red falling cherry blossoms. Her golden hair was arranged on top of her head with red and black jeweled pins that glistened in the streetlight. Her skin was pale, as it always had been, but she had fed enough for there to be a blush on her pale cheeks.

 

Louis could have convinced himself that he was only seeing what he wanted to see, but the Japanese woman who had gasped was still staring at Claudia, the woman’s mouth was open to form a delicate O. Her hand was raised to cover her mouth. If this was a vision, he was not alone in seeing it. Louis could not quite believe that he was imagining the woman as well.

 

Louis called Claudia’s name brokenly. He wanted to go to her. He wanted to drop to his knees and beg for her forgiveness. He wanted to throw his arms around her and hold her safe and close. But he could not bring himself to move. He thought that if he reached to touch her, she might disappear or his fingers might pass through her.

 

Claudia nodded toward the Japanese woman and brushed past her. Louis’s heart could not pound, but he felt a steadily growing tension in the back of his skull with every delicate step that Claudia took. She stopped in front of him. If Louis had breathed, his breath would have stopped. Claudia reached out to him with both of her small hands. And she smiled.

 

It was her smile that gave Louis the courage to reach back. He took both of her small hands in one of his, then closed his other hand protectively around them.

 

“Hello, Louis…” The melody of her voice had changed. Her accent no longer sounded like his. “I promised to stay away from you forever, but it has been an eternity, hasn’t it?”

 

“Yes,” Louis sighed. It was almost a sob. “How…?”

 

“Not here,” Claudia answered.

 

Louis nodded. He only slowly remembered that they were in the middle of a bright, busy city. He could hardly bring himself to care, but this seemed like it was Claudia’s home and she might care very much.

 

Claudia signaled a taxi. The driver stopped for her and did not question when she gave instructions in a language which Louis far from understood. They began to move. The city lights blurred outside their car, painting Claudia’s porcelain skin in different kinds of light. Louis could not look away from her. Claudia chuckled. She seemed to take mercy on him, pulling the pins free of her curls. The golden curls spilled down around her face. Louis immediately reached to wind one of the curls around his finger. He mouthed 'thank you'. Claudia only shook her head.

 

She allowed him to draw her up into his arms. Her small body was no different than he remembered it, but it was entirely different. She did not feel delicate. He had no thought that he must be gentle with her, but rather he realized that it was she who was being gentle with him. He could not think why this was, and though the driver probably would understand nothing of what they said, would not ask until she gave some sign that they might speak.

 

She felt warm in his arms. The blood she had fed on was playing a trick on him. He could feel her now, and she felt alive like the girl she had been. It was as if the clock had been wound back and he had never taken her. He need never take her. The great sin of his life had been wiped clean.

 

Louis only realized that he was crying when Claudia kissed away his tears. Her little pink tongue chased the trails of blood.

 

“None of that, Louis,” Claudia scolded gently. “I love my life now. I won’t have you grieving over it. Don’t regret making me.”

 

The possibility of her happiness stung him and made him feel joyful all at once. “Never. Never.”

 

Louis was aware of the driver’s eyes on them in the cab, but he could not bring himself to care. He clutched his child. His love.

 

The car stopped. Louis was not sure how long they had been driving. He did not know this part of the city. The building that they stopped in front of was tall and well-sculpted. Not nearly as tall as some of the ones surrounding it but with a craftsmanship that suggested better care.

 

Claudia leaned forward to pay the driver. Louis was half-expecting her to kill the man. Instead, Claudia whispered something in Japanese, and Louis watched the man’s eyes become glassy. She had entranced him. Claudia paid the driver, and stepped out of the car into the light of the street.

 

In the bright harshness of the overhead lights above the awning, Claudia appeared no less lovely to him. She looked alive, but not like the half-starved, all-terrified girl that he had found. She looked like a woman made in miniature, but for her size, no less a woman.

 

Claudia laughed at him for staring. She took him by the hand and led him into the building. They took their way up in the elevator together. In the enclosed space, Claudia indulged his caresses, allowing him to touch her hair, her cheek, her lips. The doors of the elevator opened to another door. A private door. Louis felt afraid. He felt somehow that things would change when the door opened, and could not imagine anything better than what they shared now, so things must change for the worse.

 

He thought perhaps that Claudia felt the same, because she made no move toward the door either. Soon enough the door opened from within, and Louis looked into Madeleine’s bright eyes. Louis saw his own startled expression reflected in her pretty face. She had clearly not been expecting him. She wore only a light, silk robe over a thin chemise. Madeleine began to laugh. It was genuine laughter, not frightened or hysterical. She shook her head, her red hair swaying with the gesture.

 

To Claudia, she said, “You were right. It was bound to happen.” Then Madeleine curtsied deeply to Louis, and moved aside so that they could enter.

 

Louis needed only to look around the room to see that the two women were very happy together. It was not the luxury of the furnishing. The pieces had been selected with obvious care, but it was more than that. It was the way the smaller furnishings designed just for Claudia existed comfortably side-by-side with those obviously meant for Madeleine. When Louis and Claudia had lived together, the doll-like furniture had made him feel like Gulliver. But in this space, they did not seem out of place. They neither dominated nor were dominated by the larger furnishings. Louis allowed himself to be guided to a chaise longue. Claudia moved to take her seat beside Madeleine, but when Louis would not let her go, she merely laughed and relaxed against him.

 

“You asked me how,” Claudia said.

 

Louis stroked her cheek. “I no longer care.”

 

She was here. She was real. She was in his arms. That was everything that mattered.

 

She shook her head at him. “But you should know. It was Armand. He made you see what he wanted you to see. He entranced you as easily as one of us would a mortal. I swore to stay away from you forever in exchange for our lives.”

 

“At the time, Armand said he thought we would die on our own anyway,” Madeleine added bitterly.

 

Claudia only smiled. “As you can see, he was wrong.”

 

For several moments, Louis couldn’t say anything at all. “It’s amazing to think that the two of you have been alive and together all this time.”

 

“We haven’t been,” Claudia said.

 

“What?”

 

“We were apart for decades,” Madeleine explained.

 

“Oh, don’t look like that, Louis!” Claudia chided exasperatedly. “I have had a very happy time. There is nothing for you to grieve over. I know that it spoils your fun, but it’s true. And I have you to thank for it.” After a moment, she added charitably, “And Lestat.” She sighed. “And even Armand.”

 

“Armand?” Louis stammered.

 

Claudia laughed at him again, and stroked her fingers across his face. “It was watching him entrance you. It made me think about how different the Dark Gift is for each of us. I began to focus on developing my mental powers.”

 

“And she more than succeeded,” Madeleine said fondly.

 

Claudia smiled over her shoulder at Madeleine, and the two women exchanged a look that Louis did not know the meaning of but could no less recognize as intimate. When Claudia looked back at him, she looked peaceful in a way that he could never remember her being. “I thought that I would always have to live in the prison of this small body, but my mind freed me, letting me reach out into the world… I can even have a child.”

 

Louis was stunned. “You mean another child like you?”

 

“No,” Claudia answered, shaking her curls. “Happy as I am now, I would not do that to anyone. No, I mean one fully grown, like you.”

 

“…how?”

 

“With determination,” Claudia said. Her tone was doggedly confident. “It was something like how your friend Marius said he was born, by drinking from one another, many, many times, until it was done. It was more painful than it looked like with Madeleine, but I cannot help but think it was more intimate.”

 

“You truly have a child?” Louis repeated. “Is he here?”

 

“No,” Madeleine said carefully. “Not here.”

 

“Is that why you two were apart?” Louis asked, his astonished curiosity completely overcoming his manners.

 

Madeleine scoffed. Claudia looked all but meek. “We were not apart for any profound reason. We didn’t fall out. It was nothing so dramatic. But I was getting stronger and stronger. We were apart because I wanted to prove to myself that I could.”

 

Madeleine exhaled sharply. She looked away. A shadow was cast upon her profile, drawing attention to the delicate lines of her face. Louis could remember hungering for her.

 

“And I am not sorry that I did,” Claudia continued. “For I know now that I can. But I am even happier that we are back together.”

 

“On that we can agree,” Madeleine said.

 

“How long were you apart?” Louis asked.

 

“More than twenty years,” Claudia answered.

 

“Twenty-four,” Madeleine specified.

 

Claudia looked peevishly at her, but Madeleine would not be intimidated. “I can give you the months and the days and the hours, if you wish it.”

 

“So can I,” Claudia admitted.

 

And again they exchanged that ineffable but intimate look, and everything seemed well between them again.

 

“You are alive and happy,” Louis said. “That’s more than I could ever ask. But I want to ask for more. I want to understand…”

 

“You can ask us questions, but I am not sure anyone could understand.”

 

Louis nodded. He stroked his fingers down her arms, feeling the soft, cotton fabric of the _yukata_ and the familiar fullness of her delicate limbs. He studied her small, round fingers, and while nothing in the shape or sculpting of her figure had changed, she seemed in her happiness like a different woman entirely.

 

“You said that your mental powers changed you? How?”

 

“There are so many ways, but one that I think you will understand is that I came to know that I am not helpless. I need never be helpless,” Claudia said. Her clear eyes flashed with a quiet ferocity. “One of the first things that I learned was how to entrance other vampires the way that I had seen Armand entrance you. For a long time, I hunted vampires.”

 

“You… you did?”

 

“Oh! You look so worried for her!” Madeleine sighed, barely restraining her laughter. “As you can see, she is here and unhurt.”

 

“Well, sometimes, especially in the beginning, I did get hurt,” Claudia said.

 

“Hush. He doesn’t need to know that,” Madeleine teased.

 

“But it’s true. In time though, I became better and better. I didn’t hunt for any altruistic reason, you realize. I told myself that I was culling. That times were getting dangerous and it was important get rid of the weakest of us.”

 

“Yes, that is what you told me as well,” Madeleine added.

 

“And she begged me to stop for my safety, just as you might have, Louis,” Claudia said. “But I didn’t.”

 

Louis smiled. “Just as you probably would not have stopped for me.”

 

“I wouldn’t. It was important to me that I do it. I think I was taking my revenge on the ones who would have killed us, those vampires from the theater. You had kindly dispatched the actual vampires, but I killed others like them just to show that I could.”

 

“As you did when…” Louis caught the words before they were fully out of his mouth.

 

“As she did when she left me,” Madeleine acknowledged. “But that came later.”

 

“And, it is strange, but I was not only able to kill the very weakest of us. As my mental powers grew, I was able to hunt even vampires older than myself. When I drank their blood, my body became stronger as well.”

 

“It sounds like a dangerous pursuit,” Louis said. His tone was neutral, but he held her close with strength that might have hurt a mortal.

 

“It is. But I did it, and I am stronger. Now, I feel that I have nothing left to prove. I hunt mortals safely and carefully, just as you and Lestat taught me,” Claudia said.

 

“Mostly,” Madeleine said, plucking at the hem of her robe.

 

“Mostly,” Claudia said, shaking her head.

 

Louis had known even before either of them spoke that she was telling him what he hoped to hear. He could not bring himself to be bothered by it. It meant so much to him that she cared enough to try to protect him.

 

“Oh, Louis!” Claudia sighed. She dabbed at his blood tears with her handkerchief. “You can see, can’t you? I’m safe. We’re happy. You have no reason to cry.”

 

He pressed a kiss to the top of Claudia’s head, to her cheeks. “I know. Knowing that… It is everything. I could never want for more. I am at peace.”

 

“I am very happy to hear that, Louis,” Claudia said. Her clear as crystal voice sounded strange for a moment. He looked into her liquid eyes…

 

…and it was nearly dawn. The sky was just starting to lighten, and he was alone. It had not been that late when he had first seen her. The room was empty except for the heavy curtains on the wall and a coffin that had not been in the room when he last remembered it. She had left him and given him the tools that he needed to survive the day.

 

Louis let out a wail of pain at having lost her again, but even as he lifted the lid of the coffin to climb inside, he felt lighter than he had in years. Within the coffin, resting just where Louis would rest his head, was a red silk pillow that in no way matched the white lining of the coffin. It was her pillow. It still carried her scent. Louis rested his head upon it. That morning, he slept more peacefully than he had in centuries.


	2. Her Story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story contains an original character.

 

The windows were frosted with ice. The weak, late autumn light barely penetrated the narrow, arching windows, but it _was_ daylight. Yet, there the two women were awake, alert, and seemingly unafraid. The light caught on Madeleine’s dark red hair, bringing out the shades of gold. She didn’t burn. She didn’t burn at all.

 

Madeleine caught me staring and laughed. She shook her head. The dangling earrings that she wore made a tinkling sound. “You think you know the story, but you don’t.”

 

Madeleine reached to stroke Claudia’s hair, and my eyes were drawn by the motion. The golden curls were pinned back in an elegant style that added maturity to her round, little face. Claudia’s dress was a deep, rich red like the autumn leaves outside. Under it I suspected that she wore a corset which gave her body a sensual shape.

 

“Or at best, you only know half of it,” Claudia added. She momentarily leaned her head against Madeleine’s arm as she looked into my eyes. Her voice was not, as I had read, like a little silvery bell. There was sweet music in it, but it rang out with certainty that seemed in no way small in spite of the soft-spoken tone. “Much has changed.”

 

I blinked languidly in the dim room. She had answered my thoughts. I knew it, just like people who are dreaming simply know things. I considered that this might be a dream, but I knew it wasn’t even before Claudia shook her head.

 

I felt like my heart was beating very slowly. I thought I should be afraid, but I felt only a kind of heavy-limbed contentment. It was as if I were watching myself outside myself from somewhere far away and safe where I had no reason to be afraid. Even the thought that they were doing something to me to make me feel this way did not penetrate the pleasant haze that I felt enough to let me feel afraid.

 

Claudia slid down from the chaise lounge that she shared with Madeleine. “I will make the tea.”

 

I was only able to look away from her when she turned to leave the room. No. That is a lie. There was something in her liquid eyes that made me not want to look away.

 

Madeleine appeared to take in a sharp breath. Beneath her black dress, Madeleine’s full breasts swelled with the inhalation. Her full, Cupid’s bow lips were drawn into a childish pout. “We’re going to tell you the whole story,” Madeleine said. “Our story.”

 

“Why?” I asked. “Do you want me to write it down like the boy did for Louis?”

 

Madeleine laughed. She looked at me the way an indulgent mother might look at her child. “If you wish.”

 

“Why tell your story at all? Why tell _me_?”

 

‘You have been calling to us,’ Claudia answered. She was not in the room. I could hear her in the nearby kitchen. I could also hear her… feel her inside my head. Her thoughts were clear enough and big enough to drown out my own.

 

I felt a stab of panic and covered my ears with my hands, as if that would take her voice out of my mind. A feeling of calm, purposeful reassurance swept over me. Distantly, I was aware the feeling was not mine. It worked on me anyway. I folded my hands in my lap and waited. I did not know what I was waiting for, but I knew something would happen.

 

“You called to us,” Madeleine said out loud. “You called us out of the ashes. You had read their stories. You had seen that film. You did not want us to be dead.”

 

‘There were others. Your desire was the most passionate, the most pure…’

 

I did not startle at the sound of Claudia’s voice this time. Instead, I recognized a kind of familiarity. I tried to remember how I got here, to this room, but I couldn’t. I had the feeling that I came on my own, but I couldn't remember at that moment even where this place was.

 

Madeleine’s voice drew me back to the moment. “There were other voices that called to us, of course. But your desire was stronger. It reached out to us, pulling us back like a little silver thread. You helped us back into the world.”

 

“I don’t understand,” I said.

 

“You couldn’t possibly understand,” Claudia replied. She carried a tea service on a silver tray. The thin, bone-white cup was placed in front of me. I was not looking at the China. I was looking at Claudia’s small, dimpled hand which was paler even than the cup. Her fine, carefully trimmed nails shone like glass. I shivered.

 

Madeleine leaned toward me across the narrow table. She sniffed the air. “You’re afraid.”

 

“I would think that you were a fool if you were not afraid,” Claudia said, brushing past me. She stood beside my chair where I could not see her. Her cold, breathless lips touched the shell of my ear. “But I don’t want you to be afraid.”

 

I shivered again, but this time I was not afraid.

 

Claudia again sat on the chaise lounge beside Madeleine. Madeleine leaned forward to pour the tea. She wore a small, inscrutable smile on her lips.

 

‘Drink it.’

 

I found the cup suddenly in my hands. The scent of jasmine came from the cup. I looked over at Claudia.

 

“Drink it,” she instructed. Her face was as delicate and impassive as a doll’s. “It will warm you, and it might be the last time that you have the chance.”

 

I began to say something, but found that the words would not come. I brought the cup to my lips, pausing for a moment to breathe in the heavy, floral scent. Then I drank. The warm tea slid down my throat, but I was almost unaware of the taste. They were looking at me. With their blue and violet eyes fixed on me, I felt unable to move. Even the cup felt too heavy. I set it back on the saucer.

 

“What happened to you?” I asked. My voice was not my voice. It was a frail shiver of a voice so weak that it could not be mine.

 

“We burned to ash and dust,” Madeleine answered.

 

“That much is true. The sun burned us to ashes. But did you suppose that was the end?” Claudia’s eyes sparked. She smiled and I could see the perfect whiteness of her tiny fangs. I could no more have answered her than fly, but she did not seem to expect me to. “Oh, I know the stories they told about me. About after. How I haunted my fathers and that woman.” Here, Claudia raised her small hand as if to silence a protest which I had no intention of making.

 

“I have no interest in contradicting them. I can’t. I know nothing about those stories. I was not there. I am not the ghost. I can only assume that the ghost that haunted them was the specter of my fathers’ own guilt over having made me. Even when he knew I was alive, Louis’ guilt was a nearly tangible thing, and Lestat has always been a man of ungovernable passions. I could believe either one of them capable of making manifest a phantom of their own pain to haunt themselves and others. I can only hope that since the ghost is silent, they have found some measure of peace.”

 

Claudia fell silent. She looked away, at something distant. A private vision that neither Madeleine nor I could see. Madeleine whispered soothingly to her, gathering Claudia into her lap. Claudia relaxed against her. Her head rested against Madeleine’s breasts, but her eyes stayed on me.

 

I felt as if I were expected to say something. I had nothing to say. I felt as if the blue of her eyes were the waters of some distant world. I felt as if I were drowning in them. “Peace?” I asked, just for something to say.

 

“Does that surprise you?” Claudia asked. “I hated them once, but that was so long ago. What I truly hated was myself and the eternal life they trapped me in. I don’t feel that way now.”

 

Madeleine kissed Claudia’s neck. Her dark red eyelashes fluttered against Claudia’s round cheeks which even now had the blush of winter plums. Claudia smiled.

 

“Oh, but I was telling you my story,” Claudia said, shaking her head, and gently pulling back from Madeleine. “Let me begin at the beginning of this new life. Let me begin on the night that I died a second time.

 

“Madeleine and I clutched at each other as the sun rose angrily overhead. We were trapped. Our flesh started to scorch and burn. The scent of our sizzling skin filled my nostrils. Our screams bled together.”

 

“We bled together,” Madeleine added.

 

Claudia reached to take Madeleine’s hand and kissed the back of it. She continued. “At the moment of my first Death, I was conscious only of hunger. At this moment, I was conscious of the desire to escape, to be outside this pain.

 

“Above our screams, I heard the steady, persistent beating of a drum. I realized soon that the drum was my heart. The heart that would not die as Louis drank from me would not give up still, not even as the body it beat within turned to dust.

 

“I saw from outside myself Madeleine holding me, trying to shelter me with her body even as it burned away. Her blood tears burned on her cheeks as soon as she could shed them. I could not leave her.”

 

Madeleine wrapped her arms around Claudia. Claudia turned within her arms to hug Madeleine close. Madeleine’s fingers toyed with the stray strands of Claudia’s hair.

 

“Then what happened?” I demanded.

 

“We burned,” Madeleine answered, her tone exasperatingly light.

 

I leaned forward, absently knocking over the tea. Claudia was suddenly beside me, holding the cup and saucer. Not a drop spilled. She was close enough that I could smell the scent of chrysanthemum on her skin.

 

“But you’re here now,” I said. Once again, I sank deep into the blue of her eyes.

 

“We are here now and we burned that day,” Claudia said. She placed the cup and saucer on the table. Her hand, warm from holding the teacup, brushed my cheek. I found myself leaning into the touch.

 

Claudia was sitting beside Madeleine in the next moment. I had not blinked.

 

“How?”

 

Claudia worried her lip with her teeth. I expected to see blood, but there was none. She began speaking again, choosing her words carefully, it seemed. 

 

“As I watched from the outside, I felt something pulling me. I thought that it was Death, and at first, I fought it. But quickly I became conscious that it was something Other. And as I felt the pull, I pulled. I took Madeleine with me.

 

“I know that you want to ask how again. I cannot tell you more than what I have. It happens, in moments of mortal crisis, that people find immortal strength. An explorer pinned beneath a rock can cut off his own arm and travel for days searching for help. A mortal mother can lift a fallen wagon from her wounded child. Why, then, is it so unthinkable that an immortal might find hidden power if her immortal life and the life of her loved one were put in danger?”

 

“As you said, we are here. We cannot tell you how it happened. Only that it happened,” Madeleine said.

 

In the corner of the room, the old grandfather clock ticked steadily. The seconds seemed to be counting down to something, moment by moment. “Where did you go?” I asked instead.

 

“To the light,” Madeleine answered.

 

“I don’t know what that means.” In my agitation, I seemed to be coming out of myself. I was falling out of whatever spell had brought me here, and falling into a new trance with their story.

 

“You cannot know what that means,” Claudia sighed. “Blake was right. No sense can be derived from any other sense. If you were without sight, how could we explain to you the red of Madeleine’s hair? Or if you had no hearing, how could we share with you the beauty of a symphony? How might we explain something even further from your perceptions than this? Words are not enough.

 

“I can only say this: We rose up, as if on the mist. The ashes that were our all-too-mortal immortal bodies were far beneath us, but that offered no sense of worry. I can speak here for Madeleine. Even before her dust mingled with my dust, as we drifted, we were each other.

 

“I knew what it was to live a full mortal life through Madeleine’s memories. She knew every moment of my joy and grief. We were not unaware of the world either. Thoughts could reach us. Feelings, even more powerfully. And we were able to watch the world grow in our manner of watching.”

 

“How long were you like that?” I asked.

 

“Oh, more than a hundred years,” Madeleine answered with a dismissive flutter of her hand. “Yet all that time seemed like only an instant.”

 

“What changed?”

 

“You know what changed,” Madeleine said. “The book.”

 

“Now, we not only heard people thinking, we heard them thinking about us,” Claudia said. “Or, more often, my Louis and Lestat. It reminded us that there was an ‘us’, selves to get back to.

 

“In this case, the body did not instruct the mind. Our minds, our wills, brought back to us our bodies. The scattered pieces of our former selves slowly reformed into what you see now. Nothing can be created or destroyed, it is true. Yet you cannot imagine the far-flung regions of the world that our remains had been cast.

 

“Recovery was a painfully gradual process. We could have lost ourselves to madness during it. We could have lost our will. Given up. But always, there were hundreds upon hundreds of minds thinking of who we were. They did not let us forget. They – you – called us back to ourselves. You are holding your breath.”

 

Claudia was right. I exhaled.

 

“It was maddeningly slow,” Madeleine said. “More so for me because, while we could still hear each other’s thoughts we were in separate bodies. Separate consciousness.”

 

“But there were unexpected gifts too. We’re stronger than before. Stronger than any vampire to my knowledge. The sun does not scorch us. Fire leaves no lasting mark. I am not sure if it is possible for me to die, if it ever was,” Claudia said.

 

She was beside me, suddenly. Her small round arms were wrapped around my throat. Her fingertips brushed the back of my neck.

 

“And now, I have no wish for death. Do you see, now, why you are here?” Claudia asked. “You hurt for me, didn’t you, when you thought I was dead? You read about me. You watched that film, and you dreamed of something like this happening, my surviving somehow. Perhaps, you even thought about this moment, about me finding you and offering to take you, no?”

 

I heard the rustle of Madeleine’s dress and became aware that she was beside me. I heard the sound of people in the street outside, going about their lives. I heard the sound of my heart beating and could not help but think of Claudia’s fierce, tenacious heart.

 

“We would share it with you,” Madeleine said. “We would make you one of us. You only need to say yes.”

 

‘Say yes,’ Claudia whispered into my mind.

 

I opened my mouth to speak. I made a choking noise. I cleared my throat, and then, I answered.


	3. Grow Strong

 

“You brought a battalion,” Lestat said. He gestured to the vampires and mortals surrounding Claudia. Even the smallest of them towered over her. His dried and leathery lips stretched across his teeth. Only his yellow hair remained something of what it had been, though that too had lost its luster. His sunken-cheeked face was that of a corpse. Claudia could easily imagine how that had sting someone as vain as Lestat. She did not have to work too hard. She and Madeleine still bore some scars of their own.

 

After chasing Lestat across the Atlantic, Claudia had quickly found him loitering in one of the shuttered town houses that had belonged to Louis. The rooms had the musty smell of houses too long closed, and the odor was not at all helped by the press of the bodies of mortals that now filled the rooms. It was an anticlimax to their month-long ocean voyage and the months of recovery that had preceded it.

 

The dusty puff of air he let out was probably supposed to be a laugh. “Is Louis with you?”

 

“No,” Claudia sighed. “I fear he is lost to both of us now.”

 

Lestat made a sound of unconcern, but Claudia could see his mind ticking over the possibilities that Louis absence both opened and closed.

 

“Now what? You try to finish what you began? You and these half-dead undead?” Lestat inquired. His alert gray eyes moved over the vampires in the assembled. It was not full troupe from the theater, merely the oldest and the strongest. The humans apparently did not merit Lestat’s notice, although Claudia had specifically chosen the healthiest and strongest that she could find just for this. His eyes finally drifted back to her. “How is it you are still alive, anyway?”

 

 

 

 

**8 months earlier…**

 

Claudia’s shrieks were shriller than Madeleine’s. They harmonized together, a duet of agony. Even with her eyes shut tight, Claudia could still see the angry red of the sun. Then the sun began to burn her eyelids away. She saw only white.

 

A loud bang and a screech of metal punctuated their screams as the door to the oubliette was torn off of its hinges. Claudia heard the door crash to the ground without understanding what the sound was.

 

Claudia felt herself being pulled into strong, lean arms. Madeleine clutched at her in terror, until she too, was swept up. They were lifted up like the little dolls that Madeleine made. Then they were roughly carried out of the room as if by a careless child.

 

Claudia held tight to Madeleine, but sank against the cold body of her rescuer and into the comforting safety of the darkness. She could smell blood. Not human blood. Vampire blood. Old blood.

 

“Drink.”

 

Claudia obeyed the command without a thought that it was not Louis, not Lestat, but Armand who spoke to her. Thought did not exist now, only pain and a desire for that pain to end.

 

Madeleine’s fangs had already sunk into Armand’s throat by the time Claudia’s small, sharp teeth broke his skin. The two women drank greedily. Armand called out, “Stop.”

 

Claudia heard Madeleine’s growl of hunger, or perhaps it was Claudia’s own. She raised her head. Her face was still close to Armand’s own angelic face. Looking into his dark brown eyes reminded her that angels were supposed to remote and distant creatures, unmoved by anything like sympathy.

 

Armand pushed Madeline off of him and threw her to the ground. “Stop.”

 

Claudia felt a strange echo of the night that she was reborn. That sense only grew stronger when she felt herself pulled into Louis’s arms.

 

“My love…”

 

There were blood tears on Louis’ cheeks, and in her hunger, she drank those too. The sun was long since up. That day, for the last time, she slept in Louis’ cool embrace.

 

When Claudia woke again, Louis and Armand had gone. There was no sign of them or Lestat. Madeleine lay near her. Claudia went to her, and stroked her fingers through Madeleine’s red hair. They were not alone.

 

Claudia could hear _them_ , somewhere further down the corridor. They sounded to her like a multitude of scampering rats. An infestation. She hesitated. She felt fear like she had never known before. Claudia had always known invulnerability. She could not remember sickness. She could not remember her mortal death. But her time confined to the sunlit room had changed her. She was tempted to back across the corridor, to go back to Madeleine, and to get them both away from this place.

 

But she could smell it, their immortal blood. Her hunger knew it for the balm it was. She crossed the corridor alone. There was a message written blood, a vampire’s blood, across the width of the door. It must have been Armand who wrote it. It was not Louis hand. It was not his style. There were only four words: DRINK AND GROW STRONG.

 

The door creaked theatrically as she pushed it open. She knew that the sight that greeted her eyes was a gift. All of the vampires of the troupe were arrange in a circle. Each of their arms was bound together with heavy chains – both to the opposite arm and to each other – so their arms resembled spikes in a giant wheel. Claudia slipped into the room. Her lips pulled back against her teeth, which is not the same as to say that she smiled.

 

She threw herself on the vampires without grace, and with a ravenous hunger that she had not known since her very earliest days a vampire. Only after Claudia had glutted herself on the blood of the vampires who would have killed her did she remember her fledgling mother. Her Madeleine. There were soft sobs on coming from the other side of the door. Claudia had heard enough of Madeleine’s crying throughout their ordeal to recognize it.

 

Claudia went back to the door and slowly pressed it open. Madeleine scuttled back. She looked no less afraid when she it was Claudia standing in the doorway. Madeleine looked like a dog that expected to be beaten. Claudia saw plainly then that, for now, she would have to be mother to this woman who was meant to be her mother.

 

Claudia stepped into the cool, dark corridor. Her small body crouched beside Madeleine’s and she stretched out her hand. After a moment, Madeleine allowed her hand to be taken. It was charred from the sun. Claudia found an unburned patch of skin on the palm of Madeleine’s hand and kissed it.

 

“You heard the screams and wanted to come for me, but you were afraid,” Claudia said.

 

“I’m sorry—”

 

“Hussssh. I know,” Claudia said. Her soft, silvery voice was gentle. Claudia could understand the need for gentleness as more than an affectation, because she now understood a pain that was not uniquely her own. Madeleine had shared this pain with her. Claudia gestured to the door that their vampire captives were held behind. “But you mustn’t be afraid now. We will drink. We will grow strong. It is they that ought to be afraid.”

 

From the other side of the door, Santiago’s laughter rang out clearly. It sounded anything but afraid, so they began with him.

 

In the weeks and months that followed, Claudia discovered she had a natural aptitude for torture. Night by night, they grew stronger not only in body but in mind. Claudia practiced, as well as fed on them. Just as she was growing tired of finding new ways to hurt them, Claudia discovered the mental gifts for making them hurt each other. They were puppets under her control.

 

The would-be assassins had dried and desiccated. Their leathery skin was taunt against their too-thin faces. Their dull, lusterless eyes seemed to bulge. Dead eyes set within dead faces. Claudia could no longer remember what it was to feel afraid of them. And she hated them more and more.

 

She could not stand to be in their presence aside from her games. Madeleine adopted Claudia’s aversion as easily as a child learns her parents’ prejudices. The time they spent in hiding, they spent together or with the mortal victims that they called to them without words.

 

Madeleine looked at Claudia over the shoulder of the mortal youth in her arms. The young man held Madeleine as gently as a lover even as she fed on him. Madeleine took hold of the man’s long black hair and pushed him to his knees. He made no protest. Even Madeleine had learned to call to and entrance mortals. She tilted his head back, offering Claudia the unbitten side of his throat. Claudia waved away the offer without thanks.

 

“You should have some,” Madeleine suggested. She grimaced at the door the other vampires were still trapped behind. “Their blood is not enough to satisfy you.”

 

“Nothing about them satisfies me,” Claudia replied.

 

Madeleine waited for Claudia to say more – to do something. All three of them remained silent: Claudia, Madeleine, and man on his knees. Only the mortal looked happy, as if he was seeing heaven near at hand. Beyond the door, the captive vampires were also silent. Now, they never even wept or screamed unless Claudia desired it.

 

“They look like him, now,” Madeleine said, scowling.

 

“Who?” Claudia asked, disinterestedly.

 

“Your father,” Madeleine answered.

 

Not for a moment did Claudia think Madeleine might mean Louis. There was nothing in her beloved that could be mistaken as similar to those dried husks of vampire that rotted in the next room. Madeleine meant Lestat. Of course, she had seen Lestat before they were burned.

 

It was only surprising in that Madeleine had always suggested that she had no memory of that night, and the trauma of the morning that followed.

 

Claudia allowed herself to remember Lestat and Louis. She missed them, but not only them; she missed what she had with them. Lestat had taught her a love of luxury and of killing. Louis had taught her to drink in all that was beautiful in the world. Her fathers were horribly misguided, but that did not mean all that their ideas were wrong. They had stayed too long in this dank place. It was time to once again put her fathers’ lessons to good use.

 

Claudia became aware that Madeleine was calling her name. By the sound of Madeleine’s voice, it was not for the first time. “You’re right. And like my father, I want to be finished with them. We will leave.”

 

Madeleine touched her cheek. The burns left by the sun were fainter now, but even a mortal would be able to see them. “But we are not…”

 

Her fledgling mother was vain. That was alright. “We are meant to be beautiful, powerful, and without regret. But I think that you will find that that power and lack of remorse will be enough to see us through until we are fully healed.”

 

“Where will we go?” Madeleine asked, dropping her hand down to her side.

 

“We’re going home. My home. We will go back to New Orleans. There are matters that need attending there.”

 

Claudia stepped forward. Her light steps made almost no sound on the stone floor. As she reached for the young man, he carefully wrapped his arms around her neck. She listened to his heart beating, first too-fast, then slower and slower until it nearly stopped. His limp arms fell from around her and she let him go. Only as he lay dying did she notice that his face resembled Louis’, except the mortal looked content.

 

After plucking out and boxing up the very oldest and strongest of the vampires, Claudia allowed Madeleine the pleasure of killing those who remained. Claudia no longer cared about the other vampires. She had no interest in their deaths beyond the necessity of them. She could not take their lives with the same delighted abandon that Madeleine indulged. However, she did watch the fledging kill with something approaching pride.

 

She did not permit herself to wonder if Lestat had ever felt something similar about her.

 

The next night, they began their preparations for their voyage. With Claudia’s new powers, it was almost too easy. All that they needed was simply given up to them, including a stable of victims to take with them on the long voyage back to America.

 

As their accounts with the Hotel Saint-Gabriel had been in good standing, their belongings had merely been put into storage. Louis had left them all behind. Claudia did not need to entrance the solicitous concierge who worked there. Money, easily acquired from their victims, was entrancing all on its own.

 

Soon, all of their belongings were loaded on to a ship. For each of their fine dresses, Madeleine cleverly fashioned a hat with a veil such as any modest woman might wear.

 

They continued to heal during their voyage home. The remains of their mortal victims were simply tossed into the ocean. Under Claudia’s power, the sailors who led them home and protected them throughout the day believed these unfortunates to be nothing more than cattle and were never troubled at their loss. Each victim was forgotten as soon as the sound of the splash had faded.

 

The vampires who had survived the theater spent most of the journey in coffins. Claudia spared them only as much blood as was necessary to maintain some measure of strength.

 

Claudia had been quiet and patient during the voyage, but on the night of their arrival in New Orleans Claudia was restless. She could pick out the peculiar scents of New Orleans on the salt air, and felt something within her that she had not known was missing was suddenly complete.

 

It was springtime, and the fragrance of roses, jasmine, and honeysuckle were thick in the air. She was home. The feeling startled her, as did the sudden awareness that most of the memories of this place had been happy ones: reading with Louis, hunting with Lestat, and the way their little family captured the attention of the mortals as they walked down the nighttime streets. Something had changed. Claudia had not died, but the overpowering sense of loss and denial that had been part of her for decades had died.

 

Lestat had not been particularly difficult to find. His mind was closed to her, but not to the other vampires. Not to Madeleine. He was weak. He was wounded. He would be dangerous.

 

“I will go with you,” Madeleine insisted. She lifted her chin defiantly. The soft pink petals of her lips were drawn into a pout which was visible beneath her veil.

 

Claudia did not bother not trying not to laugh as Madeleine stomped one delicate, slipper-clad foot.

 

“You will not. I do not want to take any risks with you. I have the others.” Claudia gestured to the vampires and humans at her command who stood silent and obedient. Claudia could have merely compelled Madeleine into obeying her, but she didn’t want to for reasons she herself did not entirely understand.

 

Madeleine dropped to her knees. Her tiny Cupid’s bow lips quivered. “You think that I can’t protect you. That because I didn’t protect you that night –”

 

“I think no such thing,” Claudia interrupted. She placed her small hand against Madeleine’s mouth. “I am counting on you to protect me. I will bring these creatures with me. But if something goes wrong, I will need you to come for me.”

 

Through the mesh of Madeleine’s veil, Claudia could see Madeleine’s violet eyes peering out at her with disbelief. Claudia let something of what she felt be felt by Madeleine, opening her mind to other vampire.

 

Madeleine sighed softly and drew Claudia into her arms. “I will stay at the hotel,” she promised. “I will do anything that you ask.”

 

“I know.”

 

Claudia had the mortals surround Lestat’s townhouse before dark. She came with the surviving vampires as soon as the sun set. Lestat was surrounded.

 

 

 

 

“It is enough that I am alive,” Claudia said simply. “And I have finished. I wanted to be free of you and I am.” Her eyes moved around the squalor of the room. “I don’t need to kill you to be rid of you.”

 

Lestat’s distrust was palpable. He did not look at anyone but Claudia, but Claudia had no doubt that he was aware of everyone in the crowded room, where they were, and how he might defend against them when an attack began. “Then what is this?”

 

“Forgiveness,” Claudia answered.

 

Lestat’s corpse-like face twisted into an ugly sneer. “This is what your forgiveness looks like?”

 

Claudia made a small gesture with her doll-like hand. Lestat watched warily as Santiago stepped forward, drawing a knife. Santiago slit his own throat. Lestat watched the blood drip down over Santiago’s throat, staining his shirt. The deep gash was already beginning to close when Lestat pulled Santiago into his arms. He cast one last, wary look at Claudia, and then he drank.

 

“You gave me a gift once,” Claudia said quietly. “I hated you for it. I don’t hate you anymore. These people are my gift. My repentance. Drink and grow strong, Lestat.”

 

Santiago dropped to the ground, not dead, but empty. Lestat reached next for Celeste. His arms wound around with strength that would have crushed a mortal woman. Claudia was not sure that Lestat had even heard her, but it did not matter.

 

Claudia stepped out into the night. The wind toyed with the ribbons in her hair. She shut the door on the quiet cries of the dying.

 

Claudia hummed to herself as she walked down the cobblestone streets towards their hotel on the waterfront. Somewhere, she picked up a long stick and tapped it against the streets and the fences, as Lestat had so often done with his walking stick. “’Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,’” she muttered to herself.

 

Madeleine was waiting back at their hotel. Claudia saw the needlework in her hand, but by the dim light of the room, she could not detect what it was that Madeleine was working on.

 

“How is your father?” Madeleine asked, without looking up.

 

“Surviving,” Claudia answered.

 

“Will he continue to survive?” Madeleine asked.

 

“I don’t know. But I helped as I could. And at least he will not die by my hand.” So strange, that that was no longer something Claudia wanted.

 

Madeleine nodded. Her insistence on not looking at Claudia started to prick at Claudia’s nerves.

 

“So we have no need to stay here,” Claudia said. “Tomorrow we can go wherever you wish. To Holland. To China. Anywhere.”

 

“We are not going to find your other father?” Madeleine asked.

 

“No, Louis made his choices,” Claudia answered. “He has a companion with at least enough feeling for him to spare our lives. I can only hope that he is happy.”

 

Claudia watched the way Madeleine’s shoulders rose. She saw what she hadn’t before. “The way I am happy. The way that you make me happy.”

 

Madeleine looked at her finally. “Claudia…”

 

Claudia went over to her then. She took Madeleine’s needlework from her. “What are you doing?” Claudia asked, distracted by the finely sewn lace.

 

“Making a dress for you, always for you, my Claudia,” Madeleine said.

 

Claudia hushed her. She threw her arms around Madeleine’s neck. She whispered poetry to Madeleine, softly and meaningless as a lullaby, until Madeleine was still and relaxed in her small arms.

 

“We can go anywhere?” Madeleine asked wistfully.

 

“And do anything,” Claudia promised.

 

Madeleine smiled. She squeezed Claudia. “I promise to take care of you.”

 

Claudia laughed. “We can take care of each other.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You know, Madeleine, you look so young and pretty, perhaps we can tell the people in the next town that we are sisters. Two orphans together,” Claudia suggested.

 

“Would that make you happy?” Madeleine asked.

 

Claudia smiled and nodded. “Yes.”

 

“Then that is what we will do,” Madeleine replied. She kissed Claudia’s cheek.

 

Claudia climbed off of Madeleine’s lap. She took Madeleine by the hand. “We don’t have to wait. We can leave tonight. The night, and the world, is ours.”


End file.
